What’s Canada Buying? January 22, 2013

F-35 Tug o’ War (1) Didn’t take this former public servant long to talk“The man who for seven years oversaw billions of dollars in military contracts and purchasing is defending the way he and his Defence Department staff managed the F-35 stealth fighter program. In his first interview since retiring from the public service on Jan. 2, Dan Ross, the former assistant deputy minister of defence materiel, blames the Harper government’s culture of secrecy, and a lack of accountability at all levels of government, for the project having run so disastrously off the runway. At the same time, Ross provides an explosive window into a military procurement system that has ground to a halt thanks to infighting between bureaucrats, and which he says threatens to leave the country’s men and women in uniform without the equipment they need. And he firmly believes that – Conservative government review or not – the F-35 will be Canada’s next fighter aircraft, unless politics get in the way. “At the end of the day, the Royal Canadian Air Force will fly F-35s,” Ross says. “If we have an Air Force that flies fighters.” ….”